Victory
over World No.2 Ali Farag in the final of the CIB Black Ball Open over
the weekend has seen World No.9 Karim Abdel Gawad earn his place at the
season-ending PSA World Tour Finals.

The PSA World Tour Finals will be held in June 2019 and will host both a
men’s and women’s tournament. The reigning World Champions and all seven
PSA World Tour Platinum winners will qualify for the prestigious event.
The other qualifying spots will go to the next highest-ranked players on
the PSA World Tour Finals Leaderboard.

Former World No.1 Gawad captured his first Platinum title since January
2017 courtesy of a spell-binding week that saw him beat the likes of
current World No.1 Mohamed ElShorbagy, World No.4 Momen and the in-form
Farag to claim the Black Ball Open trophy in Cairo.

After reaching his third Platinum final of the season, Farag tops the
men’s leaderboard with 10,370 points and sits ahead of Mohamed
ElShorbagy, who is in second place. Both players have already qualified
for the World Tour Finals after Farag won the Qatar Classic last month,
while ElShorbagy took the honours at both the U.S. Open and Hong Kong
Open earlier this season.

The women’s leaderboard is unchanged, with World No.1 Raneem El Welily
staying in first place ahead of England’s Sarah-Jane Perry and New
Zealand’s Joelle King. El Welily and King have already qualified for the
World Tour Finals courtesy of wins at the U.S. Open and Hong Kong Open,
respectively.

Camille Serme stays at No.4, while Nour El Sherbini, Nour El Tayeb,
Tesni Evans and Nouran Gohar take the final spots inside the top eight.

The world’s top players will head to New York’s iconic Grand Central
Terminal for the J.P. Morgan Tournament of Champions next, which will be
the first Platinum tournament of 2019. The tournament will take place
between January 16-24 in Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall.